Some computer systems utilize a defined sector of a hard drive disk, commonly referred to as the master boot record (MBR), during the boot up process. For example, during the boot-up process a computer system's basic input/output system (BIOS) may load program instructions, commonly referred to as a boot loader, from the MBR during the boot process. Further, the program instructions in the MBR invoke a specialized program commonly referred to as a boot loader, which continues the boot-up process.
Some manufacturers of computer systems customize the MBR on their computer systems. For example, the MBR may be customized to implement failover or recovery procedures that are specific to the manufacturer or to the computer system architecture. Subsequent software upgrades to a computer system may overwrite the customized MBR which, in turn, may create technical problems for the computer system. Thus, techniques to manage updates to the MBR would find utility.